Don’t Blame Discrimination for Gender Wage Gap

By Ramesh Ponnuru -
Aug 13, 2012

It’s a staple of feminist
rhetoric: Women make less money than men because of
discrimination.

“We’d all like to think, in 2012, that pay
discrimination is a thing of the past,” the progressive
activist Joy Lawson wrote in the Huffington Post recently.
“But the pay gap still exists, and it’s big: women earn an
average of 77 cents on a man’s dollar.”

April 17 has been designated Equal Pay Day: Supposedly
that’s how long women have to work to catch up to men’s pay
from the previous year.

U.S. President Barack Obamahas cited a similar
statistic to promote legislation to make it easier to sue
employers for discrimination. Democrats accuse Republicans
who resist such laws of waging a “war on women.” Expect to
hear more about the issue during the fall campaign.

Here’s the truth you won’t hear: The pay gap is
exaggerated, discrimination doesn’t drive it and it’s not
clear that government can eliminate it -- or should even
try.

Problematic Stats

Conservative economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth runs
through the problems with the statistic in her book on the
economic progress of women, “Women’s Figures.” She points
out that part of the gap reflects the fact that women, on
average, work fewer hours than men. Among people who work
40 hours a week, according to the Labor Department, women
make 87 percent of what men do.

Furchtgott-Roth cites a 2005 study by economists June O’Neill and Dave O’Neill, which found that for the most
part “the gender gap is attributable to choices made by
women concerning the amount of time and energy to devote to
a career.” They continue: “There is no gender gap in wages
among men and women with similar family roles.”

In addition to being more likely to seek part-time
work, women are also more likely to have gaps in their
employment history and to enter lower-paying fields. The
consulting company Consad, in a 2009 report for the Labor
Department, found that these factors account for most of
the pay gap. Correct for them, and men make only 5 percent
to 7 percent more than women for the same work.

Even the American Association of University Women, in
a recent report playing up the pay gap, conceded that 5
percent is a reasonable estimate of the difference between
men’s and women’s wages that cannot be explained by choice
of occupation, employment history and the like.

Not even that smaller gap can be attributed wholly to
employer discrimination. Lawson, although she favors
“legislative solutions,” also writes that women are less
likely than men to drive hard bargains in salary
negotiations. If true, that would explain part of the gap,
as well.

To say that women’s choices result in their being paid
less, on average, than men is not to deny that unfair
social conditions may constrain those choices. Perhaps men
should do more of the work of running households and
raising children, and boys should be brought up with that
expectation. Perhaps child care should be made more
affordable. Perhaps efforts should be made to make sure
college women aren’t being steered toward majors that won’t
prepare them for lucrative careers.

Carrie Lukas, who has written often about the pay gap
for the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, says “it’s
a mistake to default to the idea that it’s all
discrimination.” She agrees with Lawson, however, that
women should be less reticent about demanding higher pay:
“As parents of daughters we can make a difference in that.”

Blaming Employers

There is very little that individual employers can do
about any of these issues. They can’t make men do more
housework, or pick majors for women. Nor can they
reasonably be asked to adjust their salary schedules to
make up for those choices.

Yet the gender-gap discussion always centers on
holding employers accountable. Earlier this year, the New
York Times editorialized in favor of tougher laws for
employers. Why? “At a time when women still earn, on
average, only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men,
there is a clear need for stronger steps to help close the
gender gap.” The Times didn’t mention anything other than
employer behavior that could explain that statistic -- even
though it’s only a small part of the story.

Obsession with the pay-gap statistic has led the
National Organization for Women to support legislation to
restructure the economy. Male-dominated occupations tend to
pay more than female-dominated ones. In its press release
about Equal Pay Day, the group called on Congress to force
employers to change the pay scales for different jobs. The
government would be invited to decide appropriate pay
levels, one lawsuit at a time. The assumption is that
employers’ sexism is what now determines which jobs pay
more.

There is no reason to believe that. And there’s no
reason to think that women will ever, on average, have the
same preferences as men about combining employment and
parenthood, or that they will want to become librarians and
truck drivers at the same rate as men.

So we shouldn’t expect that 77 percent figure ever to
rise to 100 -- or even want it to.

(Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg View columnist and a
senior editor at National Review. The opinions expressed
are his own.)